Faculty Pushes to Retain Power

In the aftermath of a year of Faculty activism that led to the ouster of University President Lawrence H. Summers, members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) say they do not intend to give up their newly-won power once Harvard’s next president takes office.

Over the past year, Faculty members consolidated their power through two groups—the Faculty Council, FAS’s elected, 18-member highest body, and the Caucus of Chairs, a newer, less formal group. The professors used their increased power to act against Summers, whose leadership style and stances on several issues they disliked, and Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby, whom they perceived as mishandling FAS affairs.

Now, following the resignations of Kirby in January and Summers in February, Faculty Council and Caucus members say they will continue their active participation in FAS governance out of a sense of duty.

“We’ve gotten lazy on the Faculty Council and we’ve not taken on our responsibility,” Faculty Council member and Professor of the History of Science Everett I. Mendelsohn says of Council members’ behavior prior to the past year. “We have to become more involved, more active, and more responsible.”

WITH GREAT POWER...

The Faculty Council and the Caucus of Chairs broke through the traditional boundary between faculty members and the University’s highest-ranking administrators when they arranged to meet with the members of the secretive Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body.

“The Council asked for a meeting with the Corporation and at first they were very reluctant,” Mendelsohn says. “We told them they had no option but to meet with us and they did before the vote of no confidence last year.”

Under the University’s hierarchy, faculty members report to their respective deans, the deans to the president, and the president to the Corporation.

But the Faculty Council had complaints with two of the administrators standing between it and the Corporation—Summers and Kirby.

Council members protested Summers’ management of several University initiatives, including development in Allston and what they perceived as a faltering curricular review.

Mendelsohn says professors also felt that Kirby had failed to properly lead the curricular review, and this perception contributed to their “growing sense” that FAS issues were not being well-handled.

The situation was pressing enough that Faculty members overcame their usual reticence toward activism.

“Most Harvard faculty don’t dream of spending their years engaged in intra-university politics,” Mendelsohn says. “It happened now because there...was a sense that big showy projects were being launched but not being able to be fulfilled. Not for monetary reasons, for organizational reasons.”

Professors trumpet the meetings with the Corporation as a great success for the Faculty. Council member and Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature Judith L. Ryan calls the meetings “a tremendous step forward.”

By the time of the March 15, 2005, FAS meeting at which professors voted no confidence in Summers, the Faculty had begun to govern itself—a reality Kirby tacitly admitted in a statement made moments before the vote.

“It is an honor to serve this great Faculty as its dean,” Kirby began his statement. “In our time, this job is one that has the responsibility for leading, but not managing, this Faculty.”

The Faculty Council, which members say has until recently served as little more than a formality, asserted its independence in the months that followed the no-confidence vote by taking control of its agenda.

Soon after the vote, for example, Council members convinced Kirby to send the recently-prepared curricular review Report on General Education back to the drawing board because they felt it failed to define a guiding philosophy.

And in May 2005, under pressure from faculty members who said they found his input too heavy-handed, Summers withdrew from the curricular review’s Committee on General Education, on which he had served as an influential ex officio member. Summers maintains that he stepped back from the review of his own accord.

Over the next year, the Council solidified its power and developed an unusually public face in the form of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who is 300th anniversary University professor.

Ulrich, chair of the FAS docket committee, also serves as the vice-chair of the Council, as decreed by the Council’s charter.

Ulrich has expanded the traditional activities of her post by presenting the Council’s deliberations at Faculty meetings in addition to making the traditional procedural announcement that the docket is in order. Over the past year, she has become the visible head of the Council.

Ryan hails Ulrich’s leadership as a “very significant change” and a return “to the original function of the Faculty Council as it was established.”

After Kirby’s resignation in January 2006, the Council continued to increase its authority by gradually claiming jurisdiction over the appointment of Kirby’s successor—a task traditionally reserved for the president, who may choose to seek the Faculty’s advice.

A few weeks after Kirby’s resignation, the Council proposed a complete halt in the search process until professors could be confident that the process “would result in a dean who could enjoy the support of both the President and the FAS.”

Summers resigned less than a week after the Council made this proposal.

“I think the appointment of a new dean when it looked as though the president was much weakened was one example of the Faculty Council going ‘nuh-uh,’” Mendelsohn says.

...COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY

Though their immediate impetus for action may have disappeared, members of the Council and the Caucus of Chairs say the events of the past year have left them feeling a duty to air their views on issues of FAS governance.

Members of the Caucus of Chairs say that the body, which began to meet in the spring of 2005 in response to concerns over Summers’ leadership, will reconvene in the fall.

And interest among professors in running for a seat on the Council is higher now than it has been in recent years, Kirby says.

Irene J. Winter, a newly elected Faculty Council member and fine arts professor, says an assertive Faculty Council can improve the Faculty’s relations with the administration.

“To my mind, the more independent the voice of the Council, the healthier the relationship between the Council, the dean of FAS, and the administration,” Winter says. “An effective faculty is a faculty that has an independent voice and can bring that voice to other independent voices.”

An increasingly independent Council would be a significant departure from the existing governance structure of FAS.

“The structures around Harvard College don’t actually include much built-in for faculty participation,” Council member and Classics department chair Richard F. Thomas says. “There is some sense that the Faculty have been too remote, too removed from governance of the College.”

An empowered Council, though, might more closely resemble similar bodies at other universities.

“What was interesting when I came here from Penn was that [Harvard’s] council, though elected, met at the [behest] of the dean and met by the dean’s setting of issues that would come before the council,” says Winter.

By claiming more power, the Council might also be marking a return to its original charter.

The Faculty Council was created in 1974 to serve as both an advisory body to the dean of FAS and a conduit for faculty participation.

“Until recently, the Faculty Council had allowed itself to become not much more than a frame with nothing in it,” Mendelsohn says. “When the administration wants to stonewall it, it has done that.”

Current members are eager to “start taking back some of our original tasks,” Ryan says, and to emerge as a body with an independent voice.

And some professors indicate that the Council should do more than just reclaim the powers granted to it in its original charter: Mendelsohn says that the FAS dean should be demoted from chair of the Faculty Council to an ex-officio member or guest.

The Council’s increasing concern for FAS affairs has given its discussion an unstoppable momentum this year, says anthropology department chair and Council member Arthur M. Kleinman.

“Even if [Kirby] had wanted to, he couldn’t have inhibited this group. They wanted to have their say,” he says.

Even with Incoming Interim Faculty Dean Jeremy R. Knowles, highly respected by FAS professors for his work as dean under former University President Neil L. Rudenstine, the Council does not plan to retreat to its former passivity, Kleinman says.

“I think that Jeremy may be a little bit surprised with how active the Faculty Council is compared to the past.”

—Staff writer Allison A. Frost can be reached at afrost@fas.harvard.edu.